Home automation or smart homes (also known as domotics) refers to building automation for the home. It involves the control and automation of lighting, heating (such as smart thermostats), ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC), and security, as well as home appliances such as washer/dryers, ovens or refrigerators/freezers. Wi-Fi is often used for remote monitoring and control. Home devices, when remotely monitored and controlled via the Internet, are an important constituent of the Internet of Things. Modern systems generally consist of switches and sensors connected to a central hub sometimes called a “gateway” from which the system is controlled with a user interface that is interacted either with a wall-mounted terminal, mobile phone software, tablet computer or a web interface, often but not always via Internet cloud services.
Whilst today there are many competing vendors, there are very few worldwide accepted industry standards and the home automation market is heavily fragmented. Popular communications protocol for products include X10, Ethernet, RS-485, 6LoWPAN, Bluetooth LE (BLE), ZigBee and Z-Wave, or other proprietary protocols all of which are incompatible with each other. Manufacturers often prevent independent implementations by withholding documentation. The home automation market was worth approximately US$5.75 billion in 2015 and is predicted to have a market value over US$10 billion by the year 2020.
Home automation represents part of the building automation environment as in addition to residential deployments there are markets for commercial environments, manufacturing environments, public buildings, and retail environments. Typically, each element within such automation deployments is undertaken as a discrete deployment such that electrical power distribution for consumption, electrical power and switching for lighting, environmental sensors, security sensors etc. are all discrete.
Within the prior art approaches to combine disparate functionality within a single electrical receptacle exist such as those presented within U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,473,517; 6,010,288; 6,000,807; 6,045,232; and 6,805,469. These seeking to simply combine emergency lighting within electrical wall receptacles.
Accordingly, one of the inventors established a concept depicted and described in respect of FIG. 1 wherein an electrical mains outlet receptacle was modified to accept a replaceable insert which provided a functionality according to the insert employed. Such inserts including, for example, elements comprising an optical emitter (e.g. LED lighting), an optical sensor, a chemical sensor, a biological sensor, a motion sensor, a rechargeable battery, a gas detector, a microphone, a loudspeaker, a DC power socket (e.g. USB), a low voltage power socket (e.g. 12V), wireless router, wireless networking interface, telecommunications network jack, and a telecommunications socket. This concept being presented within U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,496,342; 9,083,126; 9,214,773; and 9,520,671 wherein the insert is replaceable once the electrical receptacle has been installed and the cover plate attached. Accordingly, functionality can be defined once the building is wired according to the requirements of the owner/occupier and then subsequently revised according to the evolving requirements of the owner/occupier or a new owner/occupier etc.
However, it would be beneficial to enhance and extend such a methodology to support other electrical receptacles, such as switch receptacles for example, as well as providing configurable electrical receptacles that then support reconfiguration through the replaceable insert. In this manner, the electrical receptacles are defined to a first level when installed, e.g. power outlet or electrical switch, and then subsequently defined at a second level once the cover plate etc. have been attached.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.